Daily Archives: 27 November, 2017

This isn’t a new story. Which is why I’m all the more disgusted I was duped.

Duped into thinking she was the saint. You see, here’s the thing. There are no sinners, and there are no saints. Rather, it’s not split into two plain categories like that. It’s not either…or. There are legend comedians who sexually assault women and women who show up to every PTA meeting but cheat on their spouse. There are people who are the heart of their communities, the kind whose funeral leaves lines down the street but their immediate family scowling in front of their dead body.

She would always scowl at the news when she saw the latest criminal being charged for the latest attention-grabbing headline crime. “Disgusting,” she would say. Maybe she meant the behavior, but it felt like she was always looking for someone to blame. Looking for the face of evil. There, there it is, she would think.

From a very young age, I always wondered how that criminal got to that point.

I always thought, especially later, that it made me strange.

I pontificate because I have noticed that the majority of people do not live in the dialectic, in the both…and. That someone who induces a panic attack in one can calm another. Most people live in black and white, a color system that braces and maintains their narrow value set. This makes it fit into easy categories that don’t threaten their beautiful Facebook photo depiction of their obvious spiritual perfection.

I can see that there is more to people than a divergent pick of extremes. Even for her.

But I don’t feel it for her right now. Which, perhaps, speaks to the infuriating humanity of the situation. All I feel is anger. And I’m sad. I’m really, really sad.

Meta

My mother, who is compassionate to a fault and takes care of all living things, even the insects, complains when I don’t tolerate family gossiping about me because she is more committed to order than justice. She wishes I would try harder with people who have told me I never should have been a mother. […]